Spotted Hemlock

‘You’re not the police?’

‘No, but I was brought into the affair before they were, and I have no intention of keeping from them any information which may assist them in their attempts to find the murderer of this unfortunate young woman.’

‘So you’ll tell them it’s not Basil in hospital with a broken leg, but his friend and holiday companion, George Simnel.’

‘Yes.’ She sat down again.

‘How did you tumble to it that I’m not the person I ought to be?’

‘I was told you were shy.’

‘Oh, I see. Yes, that wouldn’t be a word you would use to describe Basil, I admit. Was that all?’

‘Apart from a feeling I had.’

‘Of something fishy? How extraordinary!’

‘Not so very extraordinary. You see, the dead girl’s sister is missing from the college. We were led to suppose, at first, that it was the student who had been killed. I will not—in fact, I need not—give you all the details, but the police will have to find the girl. Is she with Basil?’

‘Honestly, that I don’t know. Look here, Basil’s in Ulster— somewhere near Londonderry, I believe. But you can take it from me that he hasn’t done any killing. He runs after women all right, but he doesn’t murder his little friends; he simply discards them.’

Dame Beatrice nodded.

‘What would he have done, I wonder, if you had not broken your leg?’ she said. Simnel laughed.

‘I suppose he’d have been a good boy and gone back to his job at the right time,’ he replied. ‘Anyway, I can see he’d better get himself straightened out with the police. When was the job supposed to have been done?’

‘That cannot be answered exactly, but, from the medical evidence given at the inquest, the girl probably died towards the end of September.’

‘Then, if it can be proved that Basil was in Ireland at the time…?’

‘Yes, it would clear him.’

‘You see, I busted my leg on the thirtieth of August, and after he’d seen me into hospital and let my people know and all that, he told me he’d need this alibi and asked whether I was prepared to play ball. Well, we were pals, anyway, and then, you see, my cracking up like that had spoilt his holiday, and then, again, he’d been very decent in getting me fixed up, so, as I took it for granted that he wanted to go off with some woman, I agreed to take his name and let him use mine.’

‘But was all this arranged before you came to hospital?’

‘Oh, no. Nothing was fixed up before I had the fall. The hospital part of it helped him to get away with things. He just registered me in the name of Basil and wrote the letter explaining about the broken leg to the principal of the college, and there he was—all set and everything in the garden lovely.’

‘I am surprised that the hospital has kept you here so long.’

‘Oh, I’m a mess, you know. They keep grafting bits on to me and taking bits out—the surgeon has had the time of his life. I don’t believe he’ll ever let me go.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. The grub’s good up here.’

‘There is one more thing, Mr Simnel. You said just now that Mr Basil informed your relatives of your accident. Surely they apprised the matron here of your real name?’

‘No. They live in Australia, and would take for granted what they were told.’

‘I see. Will you give me Mr Basil’s address in Ireland?’

‘You’ll find it in that small diary in my locker. Help yourself.’

‘By the way,’ said Dame Beatrice, when she had found the entry and had copied it into her own diary, ‘you have already had the police here, I suppose?’

Simnel looked genuinely surprised.

‘News to me,’ he said. ‘I suppose they interviewed the matron.’

This supposition proved to be correct, as Dame Beatrice discovered after she had taken leave of the patient. The police had asked whether she had a patient named Basil, and, when she had answered in the affirmative, they had asked some questions about his injuries and were particularly interested to hear that he had been admitted to hospital on the date she gave them.

‘They were satisfied,’ she told Dame Beatrice, ‘that he was not the man they were looking for, and begged me not to worry him by telling him of their visit. They might have spared themselves the trouble. Police or no police, no patient in my hospital is going to be worried by anybody, let alone by me.’

‘So now we know,’ said Laura, when, at dinner that evening, Dame Beatrice gave her a report of the interview. ‘It looks like this Piggy Basil, doesn’t it?’

‘We shall find out when he crossed over to Ireland and whether he can prove that he was there when the murder was committed. We had better put through a long-distance call to the police, and give them Mr Basil’s Ulster address.’

‘How many flies do you think there are on this Piggy?’ demanded Laura. ‘He seems to me a very smooth type. This alibi now. How do you really think of it?’